1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system, and more specifically, it relates to a controller for printing page data having different structures in respective printing machines in a printing system having a plurality of printing machines and the printing machines of the printing system, as well as a controller control method for the printing system, a recording medium and a program.
2. Description of the Background Art
Printed matter such as a magazine or a pamphlet including a plurality of pages generally has various styles for color pages, monochrome pages, facing pages, pages in different printing directions and the like in a mixed state. In order to prepare the printed matter including such a plurality of pages having different styles, therefore, a printing machine capable of printing all of the pages having different styles is generally employed. As to printed matter including color pages and monochrome pages in a mixed state, for example, a color printing machine can print the color pages and the monochrome pages respectively. As to printed matter including facing pages, a printing machine capable of performing printing on a paper of the size for the facing pages can print the facing pages and ordinary pages respectively.
In consideration of efficiency, however, it is problematic to print such pages having different styles by a single printing machine capable of printing all of the pages. It follows that a color printing machine printing monochrome pages wastefully supplies color ink when the number of the monochrome pages is remarkable. When papers having the size for facing pages are employed for printing ordinary pages, non-printed parts of the papers must be cut in a later step, to result in waste of the papers.
In consideration of efficiency, therefore, it is desirable to print pages having different styles by a plurality of printing machines.
In general, information for printing is recently computerized for saving resources, improving efficiency and implementing sharing. The printed matter including a plurality of pages as described above can be computerized as document data maintaining the original styles of the printed matter in a file format such as PDF (portable document format), for example. In other words, printed matter including pages such as color pages and monochrome pages having different numbers of printing colors, facing pages different in size from the remaining pages or pages in different printing directions can also be stored as single document data when converted to a computerized file of the PDF system by scanning. It is also possible to create document data stored in a computerized file of the PDF system from the start, as a matter of course.
On the printing site, therefore, a film output as a result of prepress, referred to as a saving press, is computerized to be preserved as single document data, which in turn is employed for reprinting.
Therefore, it is preferable to employ a plurality of digital printing machines capable of directly printing computerized document data for performing printing with the document data.
When printing single computerized document data according to prior art, however, trouble is caused as to printing of the pages having different styles stored in the document data.
In order to correctly express the styles of the pages stored in the document data respectively, for example, an operator must specify digital printing machines for printing the respective pages in consideration of the styles of the pages. In other words, the operator must specify a digital printing machine capable of performing color printing for color pages, while specifying a digital printing machine capable of employing large-sized pages for facing pages. Such a specifying operation not only increases the burden on the operator but also causes a problem such as reduction of efficiency resulting from an operation error resulting from the specifying operation or increase of the cost.
Also when performing printing on pages to be printed on printing papers of a type different from the remaining pages, trouble similar to the above is caused since single computerized document data cannot cope with this.
Even if a plurality of digital printing machines are prepared, the document data may include pages having a style unprintable by the digital printing machines. While processing such as size variation, rotation or color conversion must be performed in this case so that the pages can be printed by any of the digital printing machines, unintended processing may be performed on the printed pages in the prior art due to previously uniformly set processing. Further, the operator must select and set the proper digital printing machine every page, and hence the burden on the operator is increased.
When performing bookbinding after printing the document data by the plurality of digital printing machines, in addition, arrangement of the pages forming the printed matter cannot be maintained due to the printing of the pages by the digital printing machines, and hence efficiency is disadvantageously reduced also as to the bookbinding operation.